Now that the big GOP pundits are coming to similar conclusions regarding the future of the Grand Old Party we're starting to see articles asking the same questions, but with much more salient answers.
And while the Jonah Goldberg article (linked above) is a good read, there are two other items on which this post is focused.
First, the cause of death, because any good autopsy begins with understanding what caused the death in the first place. To begin, this piece by Joel Kotkin.
Farewell, Grand Old Party. Joel Kotkin Orange County Register
Those most responsible for the party’s decline, however, are those with the most to lose: the Wall Street-corporate wing of the party. These affluent Republicans placed their bets initially on Jeb Bush, clear proof of their cluelessness about the grass roots – or much else about contemporary politics. They used to attract working- and middle-class voters by appealing somewhat cynically to patriotism and conservative social mores, which also did not threaten their property and place in the economic hierarchy. Now these voters no longer accept “trickle down” economics or the espousal of free trade and open borders widely embraced by the establishments of both parties.The fecklessness of the party leadership has been evident in the positions taken by corporate Republicans. Reduce capital-gains taxes to zero? Are you kidding, Marco? New trade pacts may thrill those at the country club, but not in towns where industries have fled to Mexico or China.
While I agree with Kotkin that the Wall Street branch of the GOP has been clueless politically, a bigger problem is that the party as a whole has been rather tone-deaf, in a variety of areas, for quite some time.
Instead of holding true to the rule of law, free markets and a tightly contained, small, but effective, regulatory apparatus, the GOP has, since the end of the Reagan era, been more focused on creating rules that helped big party donors, often to the exclusion of the poor and middle class.
It's one thing to say that tax cuts for the wealthy create jobs. It's another thing to continue to say this when they clearly are not. You can holler to the rafters that economic prosperity lifts people out of poverty, but when the stock markets are booming, corporations are reporting record profits, and the poor and middle class continue to feel squeezed, the promises begin to ring hollow. The fact is that companies, often benefiting from the public largesse due to GOP sponsored policies, have not greatly increased hiring or wealth among workers outside of the executive suite. In many cases, big corporations, receiving windfalls from GOP-sponsored tax cuts, have chosen to pocket the cash and earn interest rather than invest into the market. This has provided an opening for Democrats to advocate for taxing the wealthy in order to assimilate their power into the marketed-as-benevolent-federal government.
This doesn't mean that the "soak the rich" policies of the Democratic party are ideal solutions, in fact, they will result in even worse outcomes if successful, democratic socialism only really working in countries that are oil emirates. Not only has the GOP done a poor job countering the Scandinavian argument, but they've offered up no new economic ideas since Reagan. What the GOP should have pushed for was a fairer, flatter tax that benefits the poor and middle class as well as the rich, the end, or at least a large reduction, of corporate welfare, loopholes that can only be taken advantage of by those with means, and a loosening of the expensive regulatory collar that makes businesses wary to invest. Recently, you are seeing these suggestions offered up by Cruz, Rand Paul and some others, but they're usually coupled with some silliness such as eliminating the IRS (impossible) or not coupled with realistic plans of where cuts in spending are going to occur.
The GOP has forgotten that being conservative economically means more than just shouting "supply-side!" and sticking out your hand for donations. Instead of making policy that lines the coffers of selected industries a true conservative economic platform would promote economic freedom for all. This includes big-business, middle-business and the much romanticized small-business owners who are currently being strangled under the weight of oppressive over-regulation. The GOP has paid lip-service to this message, but has not fully embraced it or taken any political risks necessary to bring it to fruition.
Second, while it's admitted that the GOP has lost it's way from a policy perspective, the Conservative Entertainment Syndicate (CES) has totally lost it's mind. Conservative authors, writers, radio hosts and TV personalities (with a few, notable exceptions) have hijacked the Tea Party movement and morphed it to a point that the purity tests became so rigid all but a few crusaders failed and got kicked off the reservation. Marco Rubio, once a tea party candidate himself, tried to compromise on immigration and was instantly branded a RINO, the put-down of choice for the purity clan, and immediately voted off the island. From this he was never able to fully recover, and therefore his lackluster campaign became a hill too large to climb.
It's gotten so bad right now that last night, as the Arizona election results rolled depressingly in, husband and wife pundit team Chris and Dana Loesch took to Twitter on a tirade against Rubio supporters who "refused" to give up and support their candidate Ted Cruz. That almost all of the Rubio ballots were cast early, before the candidate dropped out of the race, was seemingly lost on them. More important was to lecture people that they "didn't care" if they hurt people's feelings and that they were "fighting" (a favorite tactic of bad pundits and politicians) for "principle" (and book sales, one assumes).
Of course, this caught on with the sheepish crowd and soon Twitter was filled with far-right pseudo-warriors bemoaning the whining of the Rubio crowd who, apparently, had the temerity to point out that vote-shaming Rubio followers was not the correct way to win friends and influence people. It's not fair to suggest that the pro-Rubio crowd are innocent victims of Cruz and Trump's vicious band of thugs. In fact, they spend a lot of their time choosing to hurl insults of their own including "paid-divider" and other, harsher critiques. It's to the point now that the three groups, which are all comprised of the eight multiple factions of the GOP that I've mentioned before roughly chopped up among the 5 big candidates that were, initially, in the race, no longer have the ability, or desire, to work out their differences civilly.
All of this argument has been urged on by the newly risen conservative alt-media. Media personalities that you can find on your drive to and from work, on the AM radio dial, on FoxNews and, increasingly, on pod-casts and in columns recorded, written and posted on a variety of insular right-wing online outlets. Inevitably included in most of them is a central message: "Trust us (and buy our crap) and don't trust the Liberal Media!"
The GOP's response to the left-tilt of the media has been to cast shade and retreat. The blame for the media's leftward tilt on issues is placed on the education system, the media itself, communists (in their more honest moments). Instead of engaging and trying to compete in the arena of ideas, the party proper retreated to talk radio, the Internet and Fox News. There the party message became an echo chamber akin to the fools over at ThinkProgress. Limbaugh's show became a joke, Hannity was better known for his hair rather than solid political opinion and Coulter became a racist clown-show throwing any opinion against a wall that she thought would be controversial and drive book sales.
In fact, since the late 80's the GOP has become a front organization for politicians and entertainers busking products to the low-information section of the electorate in the name of Conservatism. Now you're just as likely to hear a pitch for a doomsday shelter, or an information course (now on sale!) on how to invest in gold than you are anything about economic freedom. The 2nd Amendment is a big deal not because of the Bill of Rights, but because it's sold as the last firewall against you and the government (communist!) jack-boots breaking down your door and sending your kids away to Young Communist Education Centers. The CES is big on the end times, understanding all to well that a large portion of their audience is Evangelical, and is spending at least some of their time preparing for the coming of Armageddon. It's a bleak place full of communists, collective societies and fire, and brimstone. And it sits inside the automobiles, living rooms and bedrooms of America and festers.
In 2006-2007, when the bottom fell out of the economy, there was a brief hope that the conservative movement would re-engage with the rise of the Tea Party. The first iterations of the movement, misspelled signs and all, was a call for America to return to it's lean roots, focusing on rule of law, limited government and sane fiscal policy. What we forget now is that this all was happening before the Obama administration took office. The Tea Party was a direct reaction to the Bush bailouts.
Then the worst thing possible happened. Tired of eight years of Bush, the electorate rebelled and punished the GOP by giving the Nation a Democratic legislative majority and Barack Obama. In trying to counter that, the GOP placed John McCain in the breach. A war hero who had only a passing interest in conservatism. In order to counteract his relatively weak conservative credentials he selected a carnival barker to appeal to low-information voters in the form of Sarah Palin. The GOP became a comedy show with Palin, unprepared for the job and more a reality show caricature than an actual politician outshining McCain on the campaign trail and causing the campaign to all but collapse under it's own weight (and bad campaign consultants).
The inevitable result was an electoral disaster.
Over the next four years Democrats did what Democrats do, expanded the government, increased the regulatory state and moved America away from the rule of law. When this happened the GOP put up token resistance, and (falsely) concluded that forcing Obama and the Democrats to pass their legislation without GOP support would fan the flames of conservative outrage to the point that a return to legislative relevance would be inevitable. Then along came the octopus of legislation that was the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and the decisions by the Obama administration to ignore what parts of the law they found convenient in order to make it work. In part, this was true, because in the low-turnout, mid-term elections of 2010 the GOP rode electoral which granted them majorities in the House and the Senate.
Unfortunately, in order to get these majorities they decided to run on something that was never going to be accomplished. Pushed by the CES many 'tea party' candidates abandoned the small government mantra and morphed into anti-Obama crusaders. "Repealing ObamaCare" became a rallying cry for low-information voters despite the fact that this was never going to occur. Even IF legislation would pass, it would be vetoed by the President and the GOP lacked sufficient majorities to override.
This, of course, led the GOP to rely on the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Roberts (a W. Bush appointee) who, it was felt, would reliably declare ObamaCare unconstitutional and provide the party with an out from a mess of their own making. As we know, Roberts declined to do this. While declaring the mandate a "tax" kept the issue alive, it also allowed a shameless Obama to pivot on the issue and self-unaware Democrats, who had endlessly sold the bill as decidedly "not a tax" did a 180 and started using "It's Constitutional, Deal With It!" as their rallying cry. Scorned by the Supreme Court, the GOP chose Roberts as the culprit, and was totally unprepared to deal with the fallout of the decision.
Enter the CES, who immediately seized on this to demand even more "pure" conservative candidates, notably, replacing less pure Republicans instead of Democrats, which led to the resurrection and (at the same time) destruction of the term "Republican in Name Only" (RINO). From working toward smaller government etc. the Tea Party movement started prominently displaying "RINO Hunter" T-shirts and the CES pivoted toward a gatekeeper role in terms of purity. If they didn't feel a candidate was sufficiently "pure" then they were ostracized and, in many cases, voted out in primary for a candidate who had gained the CES stamp of approval. Voters, content to buy shirts and laugh at comedy skits, accepted that rage against Obama (and, more importantly, RINOs such as George W. Bush etc.) was sufficient and failed to question why these CES groups were supporting said candidates in the first place. More importantly, they didn't pay much attention to the people that they were electing. This led to many elected officials in office who shouldn't be in the running for dog catcher, much less in control of a Statewide bureaucracy or in the House or Senate.
Much like political bloggers, the CES craves attention. In many cases the newly minted "Tea Party" candidates were supported not for being truly conservative (in many cases they were Theocrats, or demagogues, or worse, self-promoters looking to cash in) but either granted CES members access or, in some cases, finances to allow them wider distribution platforms for their brand. At the local level pay-for-play campaign endorsements became commonplace and enterprising political hopefuls learned to game the system for their own benefit.
In 2012 the GOP Wall Street group tried to respond to Obama by nominating Mitt Romney, a competent, decent man who didn't cater to either the CES, or the Tea Party that was now largely controlled and ran by and through them and as a result, many tea party voters stayed home granting Obama a second term. As things continued to get worse, and the CES continued to use Obama's poor leadership to increase their hold on the party faithful, another mid-term, low-turnout, election provided a false boost of support by ushering in a new wave of CES/Tea Party approved legislators who promised that, this time, they would follow up on their promises.
Fast forward to today, and the rise of Trump, which is the last-gasp of the CES to fleece the low-information GOP bloc that their plan is the right plan. Unfortunately, Trump is a vile candidate who is so out of the GOP mainstream that a sizable fragment of the CES has revolted, and chosen to back Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who is ideologically pure, but certainly an opportunist as described above.
All of this is the inevitable end-game that was put in motion after the so-called "great recession". After years of stagnation, increased government size (and deficits), the GOP is left with nothing more than rage. It's a rage that's being stoked by the CES, low-information voters and what's left of the so-called "establishment". None of these groups like the other and the fissures between them are, seemingly deep and unlikely to be mended any time soon.
In summary, after a too-long blog post (for that I apologize), there's more blame to go around than just some brain-dead policy making on the part of the GOP leading lights. The CES certainly bears a part of the blame, as do the tea party leaders for allowing their movement to be neutered and hijacked, as does rank-and-file GOP members for believing the false promises of "standing against Obama" logic be damned.
There will be a lot of talk in the coming months/years about how to 'fix' the GOP. Most of these will be akin to putting a band-aid on cancer. The truth is that any real 'fix' for the GOP probably means putting the party out to pasture for several years until the Democrats make things so bad the American people are willing to listen to the message of limited government, rule of law and Constitutional principles again. Until then we're going to be subjected to the CES desperately trying to hang onto power by doubling-down on their populist message and railing against all of the wrong targets.
The GOP party-proper might try and complete another debrief, and they will again determine that a lack of appeal to certain demographics is hurting them, and that their narrative is not one that appeals to the majority of voters that is blue-collar, working class and on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder. They will, at some level, also admit that the brand is not "cool". They will then take these findings, package them up in a series of power-point slides, and parade them around to the CES claiming that they 'got the message' and that hope is but a fleeting savior (not Donald Trump-like mind you) away. In the end, nothing much is going to change.
That doesn't mean that those concerned with advancing issues should stop working to educate people about them, or electing candidates that (truly) will work for them, only that they can probably not count on having a National (or local) GOP having our backs while they do. It means that the work of advancing conservative principles might have to be accomplished without the aid of a National Party, at least for a while. It also means that, as Mr. Goldberg stated in his article linked above, is that the GOP is going to diminish and break-up into sides.
What side you pick is ultimately up to you.
